[color="Blue"]The advice in this thread was originally posted for NCP, but it holds valid for other games too, hence its' move here to the general modding forum - Rafiki
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Hello,
Interressing by the glaring work of Nikel, is it a tutorial on the way to create these portraits from ancient picture ? Nikel has some can be put one to disposition but I didn't find anything in postses.
Thank you for advance
Yves

Glaude1955 wrote:Hello, Interressing by the glaring work of Nikel, is it a tutorial on the way to create these portraits from ancient picture ? Nikel has some can be put one to disposition but I didn't find anything in postses. Thank you for advance Yves

Well, you can try by sending him a Private Message too. Just ask him directly and maybe both of you can create togheter a tutorial with your experience to help the community.

"History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon."Napoleon Bonaparte

Already said it many times, but here is one more just in case. I cannot draw the pictures, well I do not know how to do it. They only thing I can do is add the color to an already existent picture and then reformat so that it can be used for the game

Not a tutorial, but here are some ideas

Software used.

Paint.NET is free, you can get it here. Used to get the format of the game

Thank you Nikel, your answer perfectly suits me.
I wrote drawning but it was necessary to understand coloring.
My school English is very far!
Okay with Hobbes, if you can provide any advice on how to resize pictures or how to add the coloured oval behind portraits it would be of great help.

I know that numbers from Photoshop, putting the cursor on a color and the program will tell you the data.

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Now in paint, colors window type those numbers. This way you have selected the same color of the oval

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Tools window, select paintbrush and increase the brush width to 10 for example. Zoom the graphic and paint over it. This way you are replacing the picture of Dupont to get a background with the oval for future graphics

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Be careful in the lower border so that you do not paint beyond it. Save the picture as .png (as the original), but rename it so that you do not lose the original! You will get something like this.

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Now do the same with the armies&fleets graphic, but in this case use the ereser tool (no coloured oval here). This way tou get an empty canvas. Save it with other name

How to add a face to the background with the oval? As an example let's try to add the face of Napoleon from this painting by David

Glaude1955, you have to know that the graphics included in the game have been drawn by a professional artist based on paintings. So if you use a face extracted directly from a painting they will look different to the originals , this is the main problem with modding without the abilities of a real artist Of course I am referring to me, perhaps you are able to draw them

Open the picture of Napoleon in Paint. To work better, as it is a full body picture, cut the head and neck using the rectangle select tool. Now with that selected, edit and paste in as new image. You will have something like this. You have to look carefully at the original graphics so that only are shown the head and the neck

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Now zoom on the picture to work comfortably. We are going to remove the background. There is a tool in Photoshop that removes it but not always work fine, so got accustomed to use it manually. Use lasso select tool in Paint. Holding the left button of the mouse and select the face and neck. Some time and practice are needed to do it more or less fast and right

Now Ctrl-I and Ctrl-X, with these shortcuts you select the inverse (background) and delete it respectively. And you have the face without the background. Note that the picture posted here is now a .png, not .jpeg. In the first transparency is possible. At this point sometimes I increase the contrast and reduce the brightness, but it will depend on the picture

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Edit and select all. Edit and copy. And edit and paste as new layer on the background with the oval. Note that it is bigger than the canvas, so a dialog appears asking expand or keep the canvas. Select cancel. First it is better to resize. Go again to the picture without the background and image resize. Dupont is around 75 pixels high. So resize Napoleon to a height of 75 maintaining the aspect ratio

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Now we are prepared for edit and select all. Edit and copy. And edit and paste as new layer on the background with the oval. Keep the canvas size. Center the portrait in the oval. You will have something like this. Note that you have to work with zoom

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As you can see we have to erase some parts. We have 2 layers if you have selected the portrait you will only erase it but the background will remain untouched. You have to do it carefully so that the borders of both fit. Well this is how I do it right now, probably there is a simpler way but I do not know other. The one I used before required more time and I will not post it

Once you have finished. File and save as .png format. Select flatten when this option appears so that both layers are merged. You should have something like this

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This is the top right part on Paint, so that you know what I was meaning with the references. Besides note that the look of Napoleon is different of the portrait of Dupont This is frustrating of course, but nobody said that modding was easy . Another thing Napoleon has nearly no neck and the face is a bit smaller with respect to Dupont

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A lot of trials and errors may be needed to get a decent portrait. Anyway the fire test is the look in the game. To test your graphic in the game. Select a graphic from the units folder that you know that appear at the beginning of a scenario. In this case the own Napoleon is good, but can be any just to test.

Copy the file Unit_FRA_Napoleon, paste in "Napoleon's Campaigns\NCP\Graphics" and rename to Unit_FRA_Napoleon2. Now copy your modded file to that folder and rename it like the original Unit_FRA_Napoleon. Copy it to "Napoleon's Campaigns\NCP\Graphics\Units" and replace the original.

Now start NCP, 1805 scenario. Select Napoleon and you will see the results of your efforts . Note that the portrait on the map is different because it is the only one we have modded so far, two are needed

We need the second portrait for the map, this one is located on the folder "Napoleon's Campaigns\NCP\Graphics\Armies&Fleets"

Open two times the portrait of our friend Dupont, one to work on it and the other as reference.

Select eraser tool, increase the brush width and zoom on the image. Start to erase the portrait completely. Now you have an empty canvas to work. Save it with another name as .png

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Open in paint the portrait of Napoleon without the background, the .png file that we pasted on the oval before. We will have to do the same. First resize; the height of Dupont is 57 pixels in this second portrait, so we resize Napoleon to 57 height, keeping the aspect ratio. Note that we have more trunk of Napoleon that what we want, so perhaps we could try with more height and remove part of the trunk, but to learn with an example is enough

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No we are prepared for edit and select all. Edit and copy. And edit and paste as new layer on the empty canvas. Keep the canvas size. Again the references in Paint. We have to move the portrait of Napoleon over the empty Canvas so that the position is identical to Dupont's

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So, zoom on the picture of Napoleon with the empty canvas and with the tool move selected pixels, move it while you look to the top right for reference, the picture there will also move. If you do many portraits you will not have to look at it The head is what has to be centered so we have too much trunk on the left on Napoleon. Again the head on Napoleon is a bit small

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To remove the left part of the trunk. Use rectangle select tool. Trace the part you want to remove (you have the reference of Dupont) and once selected Crtl-X to remove it

If you are happy with the result save it, flatten and test in a similar way to the first portrait

Copy the file Army_FRA_Napoleon, paste in "Napoleon's Campaigns\NCP\Graphics" and rename to Army_FRA_Napoleon2. Now copy your modded file to that folder and rename it like the original Army_FRA_Napoleon. Copy it to "Napoleon's Campaigns\NCP\Graphics\Armies&Fleets" and replace the original.

Run the game and start 1805 scenario. Select Napoleon and you have both portraits modded

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How to improve that result? If you compare the original portraits with the modded Napoleon, the face has a pale or white look in the originals. Encountered this problem with the russian portraits modded more than a year ago. Like Napoleon, they were extracted from coloured paintings of the period.

For this I used a tool in Photoshop, Replace color, in Image and Adjustments

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Here you click on the face and you get the orange that you want to change to a light pink playing with hue, saturation and lightness. Fuzzines is to apply the changes to variable areas of the graphic, from none to all, you are interested in applying the changes only to the skin of the face

With this tool, got some good results with the russian portraits, like the example of Inzov, posted in its day on the portraits thread

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Another pair of tips and tricks that can be used with Paint are:

To increase the contrast and reduce the brightness in adjustments

And Effects-Photo-Sharpen the default amount of 2

Some portraits look a bit blurry after resizing,..., and can be improved with some sharpening. A clear example is the default graphic of Vandamme

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I have used these tips, increase the contrast and reduce the brightness and sharpening systematically, but of course the result will depend on the specific portrait, you will have to experiment a bit

Of course replace color, change the contrast and brightness have to be modified before creating the portraits, or the oval will be also modified On the contrary sharpening can (and it is recommendable ) be applied to finished portraits, as a last step

Thank you for your explanations. Me successful with photos in color but I have difficulties however to pass a photo in black and white to a photo in color. How to color a black and white picture ? I use Paint Shop Pro but I am beginner. I think that all software function in the same way. Your method will put me on the good path.
Thank you for advance.
Yves
NB: my personal tests with the colored picture made me discover the quality as well as the number of past hours to your splendid realizations

Thank you for your explanations. Me successful with photos in color but I have difficulties however to pass a photo in black and white to a photo in color. How to color a black and white picture ? I use Paint Shop Pro but I am beginner. I think that all software function in the same way. Your method will put me on the good path. Thank you for advance. Yves NB: my personal tests with the colored picture made me discover the quality as well as the number of past hours to your splendid realizations

Yes Glaude, there is a last missing part, how to color black and white pictures.

But modding, postings AARs and making tutorials are badly remunerated jobs and I am a bit lazy

Here is the final part. How to add color to a black and white picture. Hope it is useful, and sorry for the delay

For this part I use Photoshop.

First get a palette from one of the pictures available, I used Clauzel

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Photoshop calls it color table, is in .act format and here is loaded in the program and is zipped at the bottom of the post. You can see several tones for the skin or for the uniforms,... You will have to play with these colors

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The fundamental tool to color a black and white portrait is the Color Replacement Tool, because when you apply a color to a black and white picture the shadows of the picture are preserved, thanks to the tolerance.

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For testing I will use this picture of Talleyrand, not a general but there were also diplomats

Now load the picture of Talleyrand on Photoshop and let's add the different colors. You will need some trials and errors to get a color you like. The color eplacement tool has the advantage of preserving the shadows, but also the color you add is not exactly the same you see, it is somewhat washed

The skin

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The hair, perhaps too youg for him, or not?

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Some yellow for the neck to simulate the golden is what I used for the generals

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But I will use brown to all the clothes. It is up to you to add the color you want, just use the one you like

With the picture above you can apply now what we learnt before, remove the background, increase contrast and reduce brightness, add it to the colored oval and sharpening, in this case only applied the value of 1.

For displaying only did the units portrait, and here is the result, with a picture in-game. Hope it is good enough. Who said NCP had no diplomacy?